Honeymoon
Pepper Scott
Twenty-five years ago today, the universe apparently decided it had nothing better to do than meddle in my love life.
A curious thing to measure, really. Love does not care much for calendars. It behaves more like the tide or weather. It arrives when it pleases. Sometimes it leaves seashells in your pockets.
The cottonwoods are busy gossiping in the wind again, and somewhere a reckless bird is singing before sunrise as if sleep were entirely optional. Terry would have loved that. He admired enthusiasm in all forms, especially the unnecessary kind.
The universe brought us together with the subtlety of a bang to the forehead. One minute we were two separate souls minding our own business, and the next, there we were. Attached. Like two mismatched socks that somehow survived every laundry cycle together.
Terry used to say he never dared to dream of true love. I think about that a lot. Here was this man, thoughtful, funny and brilliant, who had somehow convinced himself that the extraordinary was not for him. And then one day, without ceremony or fanfare, he simply changed his mind. "I found my true love," he announced. Just like that. As if he were reporting the weather.
I believed him. I still do.
What the universe cooked up between us was not a tidy love story. It was better than that. It was a friendship so solid you could stand on it, and a bond so stubborn neither hardship nor time could find the seam.
We built a life inside ordinary days. Coffee cups. Doctor appointments. Late night conversations. Endless negotiations with prescription bottles that refused to open without a blood oath. We became experts in things nobody puts on a résumé. Patience. Adaptation. Laughing at catastrophes because honestly, what else are you going to do?
MS persisted like an uninvited guess who overstayed by several decades.
Even then, Terry never stopped marveling at us.
Every anniversary, without fail, Terry would look at me with that particular expression of his and say, "How am I so lucky. Every day we are together is a honeymoon."
Every single year.
Which is particularly impressive considering there were years when romance looked less like moonlit champagne and more like orthopedic cushions and discussions about fiber intake.
There were days that looked nothing like a honeymoon. There were hard days and tired days and days when the universe tested every promise we ever made. But here is the thing about a man who says that to you anyway, year after year, with complete sincerity and absolutely no irony.
That, I think, is the real miracle.
Not perfect love.
Lived-in love.
The kind that survives hospital corridors and paperwork and terrible cafeteria coffee. The kind that learns how to dance sitting down. The kind that still notices beauty after a difficult night.
Especially then.
To me, though, I didn't feel lucky. I felt privileged, which sparked some sort of debate that Terry's best friend, Google, chose to stay away from.
People speak of soulmates as if they descend from the heavens in coordinated linen outfits with excellent timing. But I think true love is much less polished. It is built slowly, over years, through repetition and choice. Through staying.
Through saying yes again and again.
Even when life becomes very small.
Even when it becomes very hard.
He is gone now. That remains strange to say out loud. Some mornings I still catch myself turning to tell him something ridiculous before remembering he is no longer in the room.
Although honestly, if love counts for anything, I suspect he still hears me anyway.
My love for him remains, like a river that simply keeps going because going is what rivers do.
And if I could trade everything for one more moment with Terry?
Oh, absolutely.
Without hesitation.
I would love to hear his laugh again. To hold his hand. To listen to one more terrible joke delivered as though he were accepting an Academy Award.
But today is not a day for grief. Today is a day for twenty-five.
Twenty-five years of being chosen. Twenty-five years of being known. Of laughter at the wrong moments and kindness at the right ones. Of building something together that neither of us could have imagined alone.
The universe has good days and bad days, same as the rest of us. The day it introduced me to Terry was one of its very best.
So here is what I know, on this particular day in June, with the light coming in the way it does and the world turning as it does, indifferent and beautiful all at once.
True love exists. I have the evidence.
Happy Anniversary, Honey.
